[HN Gopher] Japan's business owners can't find successors - one ...
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Japan's business owners can't find successors - one man is giving
his away
Author : krn
Score : 37 points
Date : 2023-01-03 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Here in Germany I heard this a lot too as our economy is highly
| reliant on small family business and there's a lot of succession
| questions coming up as a huge chunk of the workforce ages into
| retirement.
|
| Despite lots of political kerfuffle a few years ago immigration
| has been a huge boon. I can't tell you how often I've personally
| heard how people were ready to close down long existing family
| businesses because they had nobody to take over until they got
| immigrants into vocational programs who now look like they may
| continue the business in the future.
|
| It's not just numbers either. A lot of domestic younger people
| were so set on going to uni and going to work for large firms
| that they just didn't want to take over their parents
| agricultural, trades or crafts business. In particular talking to
| Syrians this always stood out to me. A lot of them just seemed
| thankful for the stability and security that comes from our
| _Mittelstand_ that we tend to take for granted.
| rr888 wrote:
| Interesting that you mention Syrians. I know Nassim Taleb talks
| a lot about people from the Levant really prize running your
| own business. People who work in a regular office job get
| little respect even if they earn more money. Skin in the game.
| thriftwy wrote:
| If businesses close down, eventually the remaining ones become
| profitable enough that new people (genuine middle class with
| ambitions) flock in.
| andix wrote:
| Im working in IT (kind of obvious on HN) and I'm playing with
| the thought of buying some kind of business from someone who
| is retiring. Something completely different (like plumbing or
| electrician), where my knowledge is close to zero. It would
| be quite a risk, but in IT we are used to learning a lot of
| new things quickly. And I would need to have employees who
| are experts in that field anyway.
|
| A lot of those professions became way more complicated in the
| last years (smart homes, computerized appliances, ...), and
| many people who stepped up their career from being craftsmen
| have trouble running those businesses nowadays.
| mshake2 wrote:
| Isn't this the natural progression of a shrinking population? If
| you don't want this to happen, have lots of children.
| jakzurr wrote:
| Interesting article. Of course, the business comes with half a
| million dollars debt, as well. So he's sort of selling it for
| about $500,000.
|
| I didn't see details, but I would guess the new owner probably is
| required to wait a certain period (of years?) before liquidating
| the business?
| debacle wrote:
| A friend of mine (not in Japan) took over the family business.
| Previous to this, he was a "second chef" (is that a thing?) at a
| relatively well known restaurant regionally.
|
| He took a ~25% paycut, he works harder and longer than he did
| before (as a chef, mind you, regularly known for 100+ hour
| weeks), spends close to half of that time driving, and often
| sleeps in the office. He went from probably being a few years
| away from running his own three star restaurant to running an
| unsalable, shrinking business, owns 400k worth of similarly
| unsalable equipment, in a slowly dwindling industry (dry
| cleaning).
|
| His marriage has fallen apart (did I mention he moved 3 hours
| away from his wife + children to run the business), his mental
| health seems atrocious, and the only thing the future seems to
| hold for him is a piece of a slowly shrinking pie.
|
| His father built a burgeoning postwar business that gave his
| family a good life, but markets change, and businesses that once
| made sense no longer do.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| A second chef is probably a sous-chef. A fairly typical role,
| they're basically the Will Riker of the kitchen.
|
| FWIW: "...running his own three star restaurant..." often has
| just as fraught a story attached to it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Dry cleaning business? Shudder.
|
| I spent some time over the holidays clearing out stuff and,
| even though I don't still own a lot of suits and jackets these
| days, I still have a lot of "business casual" I bought because
| I would "always use it some point." I'll probably donate a lot
| of it even the stuff that's never been opened.
|
| This isn't true everywhere of course but a long time ago I
| worked at a company that had dry cleaning collection of
| premises. This was a computer company. That would be laughable
| today.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| A bunch of the wool stuff that's so trendy among HN-reader
| sorts the last few years is supposed to be dry-clean only.
| Though I think some folks just rarely wash it, and hand-wash
| in a sink or something on the rare occasions that they do.
| yial wrote:
| I don't know... I feel like slightly pivoting - tablecloth
| rental, rag rental, napkin rental to restaurants / labs / etc
| might still be profitable. Know of two businesses that use
| those services. (One a restaurant, one a lab ).
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| https://archive.ph/q4SyZ
|
| Question: Could this be a path to a visa for someone who wants to
| immigrate?
| RestlessMind wrote:
| Eventually, developed and aging countries like Japan or South
| Korea have to import immigrants or simply die away gradually.
| Either way, their cultures are going to cease the way they are
| today.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| So what happens when the whole world becomes developed?
| Immigration as a solution to population decline seems like a
| temporary fix.
| dropit_sphere wrote:
| https://twitter.com/extradeadjcb/status/1609972258725892097
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Scrolling down a bit, I see this reply:
|
| >If say, blue deep state dysfunction keeps getting worse,
| and it ends up couped by reds who purge & reform the
| federal government along the lines of less handouts, more
| guns, and set up the system so that political power of
| unproductive classes is minimized, woke may just die out.
|
| Wow.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| How is ,,replacing the native population with immigrants"
| materially different from ,,dying away gradually"?
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| It's the difference between Miami, a city whose population
| is more than fifty percent immigrants, and Detroit, a city
| whose population has declined more than fifty percent.
| jdhn wrote:
| To argue that Detroits issues are because of the lack of
| immigrants is a joke.
| renewiltord wrote:
| In the former universe, you lose genetic continuity but may
| retain cultural continuity. Up to you whether that matters.
| To the Japanese, who adopt adults into the family to
| preserve the family business notion, one can speculate that
| they care about the cultural continuity more than the
| genetic continuity, but it's hard to tell.
|
| Most online descriptions of Japanese people appear as
| caricatures, but from the few who I know who live in Japan,
| they are like any other human group: if some form of
| continuity or success is the only form accessible they will
| accept it.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Most countries who import a lot of labor tend to
| specialize on a narrow profile of immigrants (Turks in
| Germany, Latinos in the US, Central Asians in Russia),
| hence they are not getting cultural continuity. The
| imported labor clings together and forms a distinct
| culture.
|
| In this regard it would make sense to eat it up and
| accept population decline. Japan of 50 million Japanese
| is still Japan. Japan of 40 million Japanese and 40
| million Filipino is no longer Japan. May still be
| passable country, though.
| Armisael16 wrote:
| Turks make up less than 15% of immigrants in Germany.
|
| The US currently gets more Asian immigrants than Latinos.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| My FiL shut down his multigenerational business in Japan for
| exactly this reason.
|
| I was not in a position to take it over and no-one else in the
| family wanted it. It was a very successful shop with a built in
| client base and hugely recognizable name in that community.
|
| Culturally the lack of children means there are fewer chances for
| someone to want to take over a family business, so the likelihood
| of someone taking it over drops every generation.
| abledon wrote:
| Elon's twitter feed is 5% about this issue lol
| nequo wrote:
| He does have nine[1] living children though.
|
| [1] https://archive.ph/20220707002423/https://www.thetimes.co
| .uk...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Japan has a very service oriented business culture and from
| what I can tell a lot of the loyalty is based on knowing the
| owner and their family. Is it possible so many Japanese are
| unwilling to take over a business because they predict that the
| longtime customers will feel alienated and underwhelmed by the
| relationship with the new owner? In other words, do potential
| buyers purposefully avoid taking over business because they
| know they cannot live up to expectations in the same way a
| family member can?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| They've actually got a trick for this.
|
| > "In Japan, 98% of adoptions are actually adult men, aged
| between 20-30 years old -- not children."
|
| > "In Japan, there is a several-hundred-year-old tradition in
| which businesses adopt their executives so companies or
| institutions are "family-run" groups. In other words, bosses
| adopt their employees."
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/japanese-
| adoption-r...
| CobaltFire wrote:
| This is accurate; no one outside the family would have been
| able to use the client base.
| luckylion wrote:
| Are the children shying away from it because whatever business
| it is just isn't something they like (i.e. vegans not wanting
| to take over a butcher's shop), are they finding better offers
| outside of the family business (i.e. the businesses aren't
| making money), do they just not need to work because the
| business have made the family wealth (which is what I see a lot
| in Germany), or is it something else entirely?
| jakzurr wrote:
| My impression is, most of them want better pay. (And probably
| better hours, as some of these business owners wear many
| hats, and work very long days.)
| Ekaros wrote:
| And if they are in the Japanese career system, likely more
| stability and less uncertainty. Owning even a self-
| sustaining small business isn't always that great style of
| living.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| I'm this case no one had the interest in it.
|
| The family is very well off by Japanese standards but they
| all work.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| typical business press doublespeak -- "can't means won't".
| thriftwy wrote:
| In post-soviet countries and especially Russia, there are
| virtually no businesses older than 30 years (communism means no
| business to speak of), and most of them are quite new still,
| since there were a few different epochs already and every one had
| its own mass extinction event at the end.
|
| The upside is that almost everything is run by people who are not
| old, hence not stuck in the past. Also, gravitate towards hiring
| instead of famity ties, and towards horizontal growth instead of
| forever keeping a single store or eatery.
| andix wrote:
| The same thing is happening all over Western Europe too. There
| are increasingly fewer young people and a lot of them are first
| or second generation immigrants, that are lacking the needed
| skills/knowledge to run a business.
| bsder wrote:
| From article:
|
| > But their own children have now mostly moved to cities in
| search of higher-paying, less onerous work.
|
| Perhaps they have plenty of skills, look at the rewards, and
| "Nope" right out.
|
| Running a small business is _ferociously_ hard, and you are
| almost always better off taking a nice, cushy, well-paying
| salary somewhere if you have the option--in spite of the
| general HN zeitgeist, advice, and bias towards startups.
| [deleted]
| andix wrote:
| But with most of those cushy desk jobs it's really hard to
| make a living nowadays. 95% will probably never be able to
| buy a house, and also owning a car got too expensive for many
| of them (although that may be a thing). As a small business
| owner you can easily make two or three times what a white
| collar worker with a master degree makes.
| ccity88 wrote:
| In my experience, it's the exact opposite. It's the first and
| second generation immigrants who tend to have more kids and who
| tend to bring in fresh labour pools, and therefore more
| business making and running opportunities. This is a
| longstanding problem for any country that has an aging
| population, but the going solution (at least in Europe) has
| been to import labour by turning the needle on immigration.
| Japan hasn't done this, and they're notoriously anti-
| immigration. Think about the businesses that get created -
| local cultural food shops, cultural clothing shops, even in
| some cases entire submarkets to service immigrant communities.
| As time goes on, like or not, but countries that failed to
| adapt to the global era will fall behind to those willing to
| take a chance on immigration.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That's interesting that that's a quality of immigrants. I feel
| like that's actually just everyone who doesn't own a business.
| andix wrote:
| A lot of the immigrants don't speak the language at all (and
| no other European language), or not very well, which is kind
| of a show stopper.
| Taniwha wrote:
| You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected
| - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their
| lives and travel to another country and make another new life
| - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant
| communities
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-
| selected - they're the people with the get up and go to
| leave their lives and travel to another country and make
| another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs
| in immigrant communities
|
| On top og self-selection, they are also selected by the
| immigration system, which is... not a neutral force.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/5gIu2
| rr888 wrote:
| I heard in the West its similar, lots of baby boomers want to
| retire with small businesses that no one wants to take over.
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